February 20, 2009

Dear Sir,

I write in response to the Friday Forum written by sports editor Adrian Robson insofar as it relates to the performance of the Bermuda women's national field hockey team in the recently held Pan Am Cup.

At the outset I would point out that my interest in this matter lies through the fact that my 16-year-old daughter Jessica Hollis is a member of the Bermuda national team and has been so for the last three years. My wife, Marguerita Hollis, is the assistant manager to the team and together as a family we have followed and supported the team for the last three years. We travelled with the team to the Central American and Caribbean Games in the Dominican Republic in 2006 and we travelled with the Under-21 team to the Pan Am Junior Cup in Mexico City in 2008.

Once again you have seen fit to ridicule the performance of a Bermuda national team.

For reasons that appear unclear, it is clearly your agenda to ridicule any Bermuda national team whenever you have the opportunity to do so.

You cast such ridicule without even attempting to get your facts straight.

As you will be aware after reading the Op/Ed piece I took the opportunity to call you to ensure that I got the facts straight before I responded. This is not a courtesy that you saw fit to give to the members of the national team.

In your piece you indicate "that the team conceded 49 goals and failed to score any . . . they never won a game and never came close."

I asked you if you had attended any game yourself. You have confirmed to me that you did not. You have indicated that you have relied upon information that you received from your reporter Mr. Josh Ball. As I indicated to you in our telephone conversation having regard to the content of Mr. Josh Ball's reports of the matches it is clear that Mr. Ball has little if any knowledge of women's field hockey himself.

Indeed he appeared to be educating himself as he went along. A complete example of Mr. Ball's attitude to his reporting and indeed to even attending as a spectator at an international sports match is the fact that he failed to stand upon the playing of the national anthem of either the Bermuda side or the side they were competing against.

Insofar as your suggestion that they never came close, the score in the match with Jamaica was 2-0 to Jamaica.

Jamaica is a country of 2.8 million people and is world renowned as having some of the world's best athletes.

As the national team of Bermuda is only selected from Bermudians with Bermudian status, our team was selected from a population of less than 50,000. The population of Jamaica is some 50 times larger than that of Bermuda.

Similarly with regard to the populations of the other countries that Bermuda played against, Argentina has a population of over 40,000,000 and is ranked number two in the world in women's field hockey.

Canada has a population of over 33,000,000 and is ranked 20th. Mexico has a population of over 110,000,000, Trinidad & Tobago has a population of almost 1.5 million.

In our conversation you indicated that in your view Bermuda had no business participating in the tournament in the first place. As I indicated Bermuda was given the opportunity to participate in the tournament as a result of the fact that the tournament was being hosted in Bermuda. Your response was that Bermuda should never have agreed to host the tournament in the first place.

To be frank I was incredulous at your responses.

As I indicated in our telephone conversation as a result of hosting this tournament Bermuda has put itself on the international field hockey map and as such a number of other national teams now have an interest in competing in Bermuda and a number of senior Division One US colleges have expressed an interest in training in Bermuda and indeed in competing against the Bermuda national team. This is clearly of benefit to both Bermuda and both men and women's hockey in Bermuda. It is to the benefit of our young hockey players to get increased experience and exposure to field hockey both at the international level and at the college level.

It is not clear to me how you expect Bermudians to get experience if you don't feel that they should compete internationally at this level. This was a once in a lifetime experience for these young women. It was comparable to either you or me being given the opportunity at 16 to play against some of the great national soccer teams in history such as Brazil, Germany or Italy.

In your Op/Ed piece you indicated that the women of the team didn't spend a single minute in the gym. While strictly speaking this in itself is not true, it belies the fact that the team on average trained six days a week for the competition. The team trained Monday nights, there was individual team training on Tuesday, off Wednesday, fitness training on Thursday night, they played against men's teams on Friday night, they played local league hockey on Saturday and Sunday.

Your comments in relation to team members drinking soda and eating crisps and biscuits is one that I cannot personally respond to, however, it is no more than an example of the depths to which you are prepared to go to ridicule the team members.

You have gained what would now appear to be a well-earned reputation for ridiculing the performance of Bermuda national teams in whatever sport they compete. At least you are consistent.

You indicated that the Op/Ed piece was written because you took issue with the fact that the Premier had written a letter of congratulations to the team. I can say that the letter was well received by the team and it lifted their spirits.

You, however, indicated that you did not think that given the team's performance that such a letter should have been written. On the other hand on the same day that your article appeared in The Royal Gazette, the Bermuda Sun saw fit to publish a picture of the team and to print the Premier's letter in full.

One must ask the question how you consider your comments to be in the best interest of either Bermuda or Bermuda sports, or the sportsmen who compete. If every time a Bermudian stands up and says that they are prepared to represent their country, they are ridiculed for doing so, one would ask as to why they would want to do it in the first place.

Perhaps it because they are honoured to do so and they have pride in their country, something that clearly you do not have.

WENDELL HOLLIS

Devonshire

SPORTS EDITOR'S NOTE: Mr. Hollis' response to the few paragraphs that concluded this week's Forum, misses the point. As a lawyer, he might have been expected to understand the intention of the comments. Apparently not.

As the girls' hockey team were overwhelmed and thoroughly outplayed, many of our readers will have been bemused by the letter of congratulations sent by the Premier which only served to completely devalue past performances by Bermuda teams who have exceeded expectations and who deserved commendation. And at the same time they rendered insincere any comments made by Government in the future which might congratulate those athletes who excel.

As suggested to Mr. Hollis in our telephone conversation, it might have been better had Bermuda first chosen to host a tournament against college teams against whom they might have been able to compete, rather than expose a clearly under-prepared national side to some of the game's top nations.

As for Mr. Hollis' assertion that facts were distorted, I can only repeat . . .the team conceded 49 goals, failed to score any, never won a game, and never came close.

Those are the undisputed facts.

Mr. Hollis appears to believe that 25-0 and 10-0 defeats such as those suffered by Bermuda are in some form beneficial. Yet he claims to understand the sport.